The Great Eastern

by Howard Rodman

  His third night there he woke abruptly from his dreams. Something had come down hard on the small of his back. He heard, then felt, the bones of his ribs crack asunder. The pain, when it arrived a brief moment later, was like unto hellfire.

  “Jabez.”

  A voice spoke the name he was given at birth. A name no one had uttered for almost a decade. In his mind, as if incited by the pain, is a song, sung by a choir he heard in Mississippi in a white clapboard church in a darker neighborhood; it comes back in this room now, surprising and unbidden and in full force.

  You better get ready for judgment,

  You better get ready for judgment morning.

  You better get ready for judgment

  My God it’s coming down.

  Jabez opened his eyes and what he saw was as terrible as the most terrible dream. What he saw was a man standing impossibly tall, in black trousers and black coat. In the large dark man’s hand was a thick ivory club. It was an object with which Jabez was more than familiar: It was his own leg. Unstrapped in preparation for bed, left casually on the coiled rug, raised high. And now descending again with great and terrible force.

  Better get ready for judgment

  ‘Cause God is coming down.

  Who is this man? In Jabez’s mind this is the man he played onstage and off. This is the man who died at sea and whose legend was his sustenance and provision. In Indiana, in Tennessee, in Alabama, across the South and up the Mississippi River, Jabez had taken the role of this man, safe in the knowledge that the impersonation would go uncontested. The man was dead. Is dead. How could he be here in this room? How could he now come through the door to enact his own drama of vengeance before this terrified and trembling house?

  Jabez stared up at his assailant; a red mist descended before his eyes. The image of the large black-suited man shifted in and out of focus but the face remained still and clear. Jabez is staring at himself: a larger, more terrible image of himself. Jabez is staring into a demonic glass, all his faults, all lapses of faith reflected large in front of him even as the long club descended once more, hitting the side of his head, fracturing his left orbital socket, the hum in his ears, and the song louder—

  Better put on your morning garment

  And get your staff in your hand

  ‘Cause Jesus coming that morning

  He’s coming unaware to man.

  —and now, only now, does unconsciousness blissfully descend. Somewhere downstairs a grandfather clock ticks the slow seconds. Somewhere down the hall an isolato hacks and coughs. Jabez has the breath for just one word:

  “Why?”

  The large dark man gave no response. Laid down the bloodied club on the bed: the sheet-white Jabez, the red-soaked sheets. The man turned, presenting his broad and black-cloaked back. Took a step toward the door. And left without giving answer.

  * * *

  —

  JABEZ’S KILLER HE made for the river. His route was direct, not the route of a man bent on evasion—as if he were running not away but toward. He encountered no one on the narrow streets. There were lights in some of the windows but he kept his eyes fixed ahead, not knowing or caring whether he was spotted along his line of march. The air grew more saline. His shoulders rose as if with each step toward the river a burden were being lifted.

  At the edge of the Hudson was a wood-frame building, a shack really, with a rusted hasp that would prevent no one, let alone a large man, from gaining entrance. The door creaked on rusted hinges. The large man went through, from gloom to darkness, descended two wooden flights, debouched through the rear door—smaller, but no more secure than the other—onto a brief jetty. Tied to the jetty was a skiff. He climbed in, bad leg first, unhitched the hawser, grabbed the oars, shoved off. His face was pointed toward the fine shore of New Jersey but the craft made straight in the direction opposite, toward the isle of the Manhattoes, where fireworks burst in air and infernos could even now be seen glimmering on the far banks. ‘Twas the cable that was being celebrated, the telegraphic cable, a single length of wire ‘cross the North Atlantic, with words exchanged in mere moments between President and Queen—about which, more anon!

  The shore receded stroke by stroke. He was on water. There had been a man making sport of him, earning his living by pretense, adopting his own name and history as a means of livelihood. This had to end and now it had ended. At the hand of John Ahab, the real.

  Ahab now he glides, stroke by stroke, into the future, eyes fixed on the past, but in no sense lingering there. That is land. He is on water. He is heading toward an island. He does not like land but an island is, to him, tolerable, on account of what surrounds it. He would live, if he had to, on Martha’s Vineyard. He would live, were he compelled, on a cay in the Caribbean. But right now, neither on land nor on island, he is not here, he is not there. Which is why he is at home. At home but rowing, now, toward the light. Toward the flames. Toward the fireworks. A fête incited by, and in celebration of, Telegraphy. Telegraphy! The thread that runs like unbroken filament of ductile and conductive copper through the lives of our three protagonists.

  SIX

  AFTER TWO FALSE starts, four failed expeditions—and more breaks, snaps, bankruptcies, failures, and disasters than anyone might have contemplated—it was done: a braid of cable, packed in gutta-percha, unspooled by the ship Agamemnon and the ship Niagara upon the bed of the North Atlantic, now stretched from Valentia Harbor to Trinity Bay! A rope of copper—conductive, continuous—from Foilhummerum to Heart’s Content, Ireland to Newfoundland, Europe to the Americas. That world and this one were now joined, by strands of lightning under water.

  The circuit had been completed at 1:45 a.m. on 5th August. The enterprise’s director—the paper and dry goods magnate Cyrus Field, out of Stockbridge—had run ashore in Newfoundland and awakened the local telegraph operators proclaiming, “The cable is lain!” The first official message was then sent by the Company directors in London to their fellow directors in New York. Transmitted in Morse’s code, it read as follows:

  . ..- .-. -– .—. . / .- -. -.. / .-—. .-. .. -.-. .- / .- .-. . / ..- -. .. - . -.. / -— -.–

  / - . .-.. . —. .-. .- .—. —. -.– /—- -– .—. / —. .-.. -– .-. -.– / - -– / —.

  -– -.. / .. -. / - —. . / —. .. —. —. .—- / -.-. -–—– .- / -– -. / . .- .-. -

  —. / .—…- -.-. . / -.-. -–—– .- / —. -– -– -.. .– .. .-.. .-.. / - -– .– .- .-.

  -..—/—. -. /—- -– .—. / . -. -.. .. - /

  Or, in plaintext:

  EUROPE AND AMERICA ARE UNITED BY TELEGRAPHY STOP GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST COMMA ON EARTH PEACE COMMA GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN STOP ENDIT

  The next exchange was even more exalted—to wit, a missive from Queen Victoria to the President himself:

  The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has taken the deepest interest. The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now connects Great Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between the two places whose friendship is founded upon their common interests and reciprocal esteem. The Queen has much pleasure in thus directly communicating with the President, and in renewing to him her best wishes for the prosperity of the United States.

  To which our President Buchanan did respond:

  The President cordially reciprocates the congratulations of her Majesty the Queen, on the success of the great international enterprise accomplished by the science, skill and indomitable energy of the two countries. It is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. May the Atlantic telegraph, under the blessings of heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world. In this view, w
ill not all nations of Christendom spontaneously unite in the declaration that it shall be forever neutral, and that its communications shall be held sacred in passing to their places of destination, even in the midst of hostilities?

  And with those words, thus did celebrations begin that night on both sides of the Atlantic. These revels were as is ofttimes the case accompanied by the imprudent consumption of alcohol. There were poems of many stanzas indited to commemorate the occasion. The attorney and lapsed pianist William Winter was so moved by the event that he reverted to his former métier and wrote the following, to the air of “Hail, Columbia”:

  Grand with feeling, sweet and strong,

  Swell to-night the choral song!

  For the noble work is done;

  And the precious prize is won;

  And the raptured nations stand

  Face to face and hand in hand.

  Even for a city renowned for its refusal to call it a night, a visitor to the island of the Manhattoes would see what spirit looked like when fully loosed. The roister was cumulative, crest adding to crest, trough canceling out trough, each night a recapitulation of the night previous and then more on top of it. A flaming rag for every broken heart on Broadway. Were there sufficient barrels of kerosene and rum to fuel these torches, these bellies? It seems that there are. Have the songs all been sung? Well then, add another verse.

  While Thought’s winged couriers sweep

  Through the oozy dungeons deep!

  Honor those who sowed the seed—

  Noble thought and noble deed!

  For the rainbow arch sublime,

  Rises o’er the sea of Time;

  And the starry lights presage

  Triumphs of the golden age.

  The incomparable Liliendahl organized a pyrotechnic display for the Crystal Palace, and as word spread all of Reservoir Square was filled cheek-to-jowl. Other, lesser pyrotechnicians laid claim to other monuments, began packing their powder. Come nightfall all down the Stem, for a distance of three miles: fires of oil and wood and cloth and paper, the flames sprinkled with copper sulfate, with arsenic, with elemental salts, to render the flames blue and crimson and green, deep oceanic green, and purple too, the color that appears when you press your knuckles into your eyes. As if the flames were not sufficient the revelers projected large transparencies onto every hotel and many private dwellings. Down Broadway each storefront became a canvas for the epigrammatic and laudatory phrase, projected bright and flickering onto the glass and stone. It was night, but in Times Square now it was as bright as day, the colors and hues gone tropic and riotous.

  Yet even as songs were sung, fires were lit, and glories were offered unto God, there was a hollow at the center of the jamboree: by 7th August Mr. Field—now repatriated to New York—learned that the cable, having carried a few fine and select messages, had flickered. Guttered. Was now: extinguished. And with it, the imagination of a trans-Atlantic future. Up and down the streets of Manhatto, thousands of celebrants were paying loud, intoxicated tribute to light from a star that had already been extinguished.

  Mr. Field kept the knowledge close to his chest, as a religious man might travel with a Bible stuffed into his breast pocket, protecting his heart. Mr. Field he was a straightforward man from Massachusetts. The dreaming he left to others while himself tending to the practicalities. So even as the banked flames of panic flared up within his gut his mind focused on three distinct tasks, and three only:

  The first, to keep the news contained. Were the word to leak out among the community of capital, among his investors, Mr. Field’s livelihood and even freedom would be upon the rack. And were the word to spread more precipitously, one can only imagine how the streets’ fierce inebriates, wild carousers, and hopped-up celebrants might respond to what they would likely see as fraud, if not betrayal.

  The second, to gather capital for yet another expedition, that the sundered cable be re-joined. There were no funds from the previous venture left over. The paradox faced by Mr. Field was not a new one: there would be investors only for a successful cable, but if the cable needed repair, it was no longer successful. The money men—whether they be merchants, or the solons of the US Congress—would not associate themselves, or their funds, with anything redolent of failure.

  The third, and perhaps most difficult: it had become clear to Mr. Field that the problem was not in the laying of the cable—that had been done, and done well, on several voyages—but rather the protection of the cable ‘gainst whatever had snapped it. Mr. Field was a God-fearing man, and believed, as did many Massachusetts Christians, that the good fortune visited upon his family was but a sign of God’s blessing upon it. His brother Stephen—whom he hated—had just been appointed to the California Supreme Court. His brother Henry, the doctor of divinity, was the editor and publisher of The Evangelist, devoted to spreading the word of God in a Protestant way. The New York State Code of Civil Procedure was known as the Field Code, as it was instigated and written by his third brother, David. So clearly: the breaks in the cable were not expressions toward the family Field of disappointment on the part of the Almighty.

  It was possible that the slow settling of the cable into the ocean-floor sediment might be the prime cause—yet if that be the case, how to explain the way the breaks seemed timed, as if with exquisite precision, to raise hopes, and then to dash them down?

  After a morning spent in contemplation and prayer, Mr. Field came to the conclusion that his cable’s nemesis was neither God- nor Nature-driven, but was rather the work of active agency. Of consciousness. Having eliminated what, to him, were all other possibilities, what remained was the one both simplest and most terrifying: a sea-creature, of malevolent will and unimaginable might. And who might combat this oceanic Leviathan? Who in our Republic would have the knowledge to find him, the instinct to track him, the desire to slay him?

  ‘Twas not a long list. ‘Twas not even the fingers of one hand.

  SEVEN

  LATER THAT MORNING, after Mr. Field to himself had admitted he was in need of a knight to slay a sea-dragon, he did make some discreet enquiries. But his ideal candidate—you will by now have surmised, of course, that we are referring to our Ahab—was not someone who basked in the public gaze. He was said, by all, to be peripatetic, but was also said, by all, to return again and again to the island of the Manhattoes: living low, somewhere by the battery’s great south wheel, even after the voyage that was held by the crowd to have been his last.

  It was thus on the recommendation of some fellow members of his club that Mr. Field did that afternoon hire a Manhattan native, one James Fearnley, a lapsed or recovering detective, late of the Municipal Police, to locate the captain, and having located him, retrieve him. It was Mr. Field’s hope that Fearnley, by repute an able and practiced rooter, might flush him out.

  What he asked of Fearnley was to bring John Ahab to his apartments in Gramercy Park. It would then be Mr. Field’s task to make the offer sufficiently rewarding that Ahab would have no alternative but to assent. Should Ahab not be found? Or should he refuse, once found, to join with Mr. Field? Field sighed to think of it—for then the cable scheme would, like the cable itself, be buried in the silt of time; the rainbow arch sublime would be left for another generation of dreamers and doers; and those gathered at his memorial would sing the praises of Cyrus W. Field, paper merchant, of Stockbridge, Lee, and Westfield Massachusetts, brother of, brother of.

  * * *

  —

  HAVING BEEN THUS commissioned, Fearnley paid visit to the saloons into which his beloved Municipals had burrowed to console their decommissioning. He paid similar visit to a distinct and separate set of drinking houses where the hated Metropolitans—who by upstate subterfuge had replaced the Municipals earlier that year—would repair after, and at times during, their working day. He spent an evening at a brawling, roiling Tammany beefsteak, where four hundred men devoured three times as many pounds of grilled cow. He went high, he went low; he walked up as
far as Haarlem and down as far as Castle Clinton, making enquiries, leaving word: Has anyone seen a large man, one good leg, who, if past be prologue, would gravitate toward the shore?

  Fearnley’s employer, Mr. Field, was in possession of a secret large enough to bring ruination, and did not share with his hired man anything that his man had not a need to know. Hence: nothing of the cable, nothing of its prospects, nothing of Ahab’s importance to the venture going forward. This was, from what Fearnley had been told, a simple find-and-retrieve. Fearnley assumed, by experience if not by direct instruction, that news of the quarry’s death would be as equally welcome as the retrieval of the quarry itself. In Fearnley’s time with the Municipals he had learned that of the two alternatives, the former was safer, easier, more prone to please one’s commander. He’d been a policeman for some twelve years during which it was the live ones who gave him trouble, never the other kind.

  And so Fearnley ventured forth with a pair of handcuffs retained from his previous employment. Handcuffs, yes, but also with his pistol.

  * * *

  —

  AS WITH MUCH detective work, enquiries went unanswered, promising leads yielded up little, informants demanded compensation but as quid pro quo gave forth with legend rather than fact. And though there was a small per diem, Fearnley’s payoff would come only with completion of the task. He decided, on 17th of August, to cease for the evening his pursuit. It would be impossible, in the midst of the unending celebration—which had built up, and grown more fierce, night by night—to contemplate forward progress. So he gave in to the larger thrall, let himself be carried to Reservoir Square on Forty-Second Street where his employer was making yet another magnificent public speech to a crowd numbering in the thousands. Brother could not find brother here. Fearnley was spent, off-the-clock, in the midst of this densest throng. Limpid in the August heat. Yet what was that? Over there! What was that? At the far edge of the mob? What was that? A tingle felt before seen: a large dark man with syncopated gait—